Chris Knipp
05-26-2016, 08:55 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/gmboy.jpg
Almost Holy.
This intense documentary about a Ukrainian priest on the edge between sainthood and criminality is showing now in NYC and the Bay Area. For my New York Movie Journal review go HERE (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4146-NEW-YORK-MOVIE-JOURNAL-(May-2016)&p=34686#post34686). Ben Konigsberg in the NYTImes said it's "A good example of how a charismatic figure doesn’t automatically generate a deep or compelling documentary," and he has a point, there. The trouble is that Father Gennadiy Mokhnenko is as much icky as admirable. The director Steve Hoover follows Mokhnenko closely but maybe gives him too much free rein; he lets the priest narrate constantly in his oddball English, and what is at first flavorful eventually becomes repetitious. That one unexpected event that takes a documentary in a new direction didn't happen. The wayward boys Mokhnenko rescues are the best material; maybe Hoover should have followed them more closely.
fROM: NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Early May 2016)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/gennadiy.jpg
ALMOST HOLY/CROCODILE GENNADIY (Steve Hoover 2016). (A preview.] This film, handsomely shot by John Pope and co-produced by Terrence Malick, focuses on a morally complex hero of contemporary Ukraine, pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko, who since early 2000's has taken the law into his own hands to rescue children from the streets and from abusive or neglectful parents. Gennadiy's heart is as big as his ego and he knows how to tweak the media to promote or excuse his projects, which include foster homes and his own 32 adopted children, mostly boys, often drug-addicted at a shockingly early age, who learn to box, read, and grow vegetables. (His wife obviously is in deep sympathy with the work.) We see ugly stuff, and we perceive a world so impoverished and chaotic -- the film ends with the Russia-Ukraine conflict at its height -- that strong measures seem understandable. Gennadiy's colorfully crude English dominates the soundtrack, and the film features gorgeous cinematography, idiosyncratic editing, a score partly by Atticus Ross (Gone Girl, The Social Network), and the metaphorical commentary of clips from a quirky animated TV series called "Crocodile Gennadiy" about doing good, with a nasty old lady who always objects. At the end Father Gennadiy, who attracts and repels us, lies on the sand like a beached whale, as if literally flattened by the deteriorated social and political situations. US theatrical release of this scrappy Tribeca film begins 20 May.
Opening in San Francisco on May 27th at Alamo Draft House.
Almost Holy.
This intense documentary about a Ukrainian priest on the edge between sainthood and criminality is showing now in NYC and the Bay Area. For my New York Movie Journal review go HERE (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4146-NEW-YORK-MOVIE-JOURNAL-(May-2016)&p=34686#post34686). Ben Konigsberg in the NYTImes said it's "A good example of how a charismatic figure doesn’t automatically generate a deep or compelling documentary," and he has a point, there. The trouble is that Father Gennadiy Mokhnenko is as much icky as admirable. The director Steve Hoover follows Mokhnenko closely but maybe gives him too much free rein; he lets the priest narrate constantly in his oddball English, and what is at first flavorful eventually becomes repetitious. That one unexpected event that takes a documentary in a new direction didn't happen. The wayward boys Mokhnenko rescues are the best material; maybe Hoover should have followed them more closely.
fROM: NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Early May 2016)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/gennadiy.jpg
ALMOST HOLY/CROCODILE GENNADIY (Steve Hoover 2016). (A preview.] This film, handsomely shot by John Pope and co-produced by Terrence Malick, focuses on a morally complex hero of contemporary Ukraine, pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko, who since early 2000's has taken the law into his own hands to rescue children from the streets and from abusive or neglectful parents. Gennadiy's heart is as big as his ego and he knows how to tweak the media to promote or excuse his projects, which include foster homes and his own 32 adopted children, mostly boys, often drug-addicted at a shockingly early age, who learn to box, read, and grow vegetables. (His wife obviously is in deep sympathy with the work.) We see ugly stuff, and we perceive a world so impoverished and chaotic -- the film ends with the Russia-Ukraine conflict at its height -- that strong measures seem understandable. Gennadiy's colorfully crude English dominates the soundtrack, and the film features gorgeous cinematography, idiosyncratic editing, a score partly by Atticus Ross (Gone Girl, The Social Network), and the metaphorical commentary of clips from a quirky animated TV series called "Crocodile Gennadiy" about doing good, with a nasty old lady who always objects. At the end Father Gennadiy, who attracts and repels us, lies on the sand like a beached whale, as if literally flattened by the deteriorated social and political situations. US theatrical release of this scrappy Tribeca film begins 20 May.
Opening in San Francisco on May 27th at Alamo Draft House.